Primary Profession. Allows a Blacksmith to make basic to well-crafted weapons and armor up to a maximum potential skill of X. Requires stone and metal found with the mining skill.

Blacksmithing is a profession and is the art of forging items out of metals, minerals, and other trade goods. Blacksmiths utilize bars of metal unearthed and smelted by the mining profession along with various trade and magical goods to produce their wares.

A blacksmith can create melee weapons, armor (mail and plate), trade items used as ingredients by other professions (such as rods for enchanters) and keys used to unlock a variety of items in the world. Additionally, blacksmiths can craft items that when applied to weapons can provide temporary (and in some cases, permanent) buffs to items.

While they can create a variety of items, they strangely cannot repair these items when damaged, and must still use the services of a repair vendor.

In general, blacksmithing mainly benefits mail and plate wearing classes for the unique armors that can be created. However, most (if not all) classes can use a good deal of the weapons produced by blacksmiths. Ideally, blacksmithing would be paired with mining as a second profession. Mining is not a prerequisite for the blacksmithing profession.

As of patch 3.0.2, Blacksmiths can now permanently place a socket on their own bracers and gloves at skill level 400 (see Socketing below).

Contents

Training as a Blacksmith

Blacksmithing is taught by various blacksmithing trainers located throughout the world. Prospective blacksmiths must be level 5. Initial training costs 10 copper, granting the Apprentice level with a potential skill of 75 and access to apprentice blacksmithing plans taught by trainers or found throughout the world. Most recipes require the use of a blacksmith hammer and anvil, however, some (such as Rough Sharpening Stone, for example) do not.

The following are the required levels and potential skill of each stage of the profession:

Perks

Unlike some other professions, Blacksmithing does not get an additional ability. However, blacksmiths do get to add additional sockets to their gear that are not available to other professions. See the Socketing section below for details.

Advancing as a Blacksmith

Crafting items is the only way to progress through the stages. Plans will appear as one of four colors in the profession window, with a certain chance for a skill up (gaining a point):

Skill Up Percentages

Color

Chance

Orange

100% Chance

Yellow

50-75% Chance

Green

50% Chance or less

Grey

0% Chance

As your blacksmithing skill increases, plans will change from orange to yellow, yellow to green and green to grey. Only by finding higher skill plans can one continue to progress through the stages. Approximately every 5-10 points, new plans will become available to learn. These can be learned from trainers, looted from corpses, given as quest rewards or purchased from vendors or the auction house. All plans have a requisite blacksmithing skill to be learned and produced. Additionally, some plans cannot be learned until you have a certain reputation level with a given faction.